This is big, Colorado. Two people in the space of a few weeks apparently consumed edible marijuana products now sold in retail stores and seem to have lost their grip on reality. One, a student from Wyoming, fell to his death from a hotel room. The other's frightening behavior allegedly concluded Monday with the shooting of his wife. He is now facing murder charges. It may be t...

trying to control people is no substitute for a culture that values responsibility... it's pretty sad that we are so vulnerable to suggestion, taking for granted unnecessary beliefs.

I do not even want to bring to mind examples of such beliefs, I need to get on with my life. But, we are surrounded by them. With such a limited culture focus and lack of understanding about the world that we live in, we use what is at our disposal. Some guy feels dread, assumes it's the end of the world. Another guy jumps off a balcony for lack of any better ideas.

People need to be able to choose to be responsible instead of being treated like cattle, choose free will, instead of following along a path that when strayed from is punished and/or causes anxiety.

FrozenFlower wrote:trying to control people is no substitute for a culture that values responsibility... it's pretty sad that we are so vulnerable to suggestion, taking for granted unnecessary beliefs...../snip

People need to be able to choose to be responsible instead of being treated like cattle, choose free will, instead of following along a path that when strayed from is punished and/or causes anxiety.

It seems you do not apply the same philosophy you espouse above to gun ownership. In the case of individuals whose free will leans toward unhindered second amendment rights you propose to keep track of their property, you feel they are not capable of choosing to be responsible, that they should be annually inspected like cattle.

from the archives of FrozenFlower;They should probably beef up the registration process for firearms... and keep better track of the weapons. Maybe do like a yearly inspection to make sure that the weapons are accounted for....

What exactly is your definition of "safe"....Tylenol is fairly safe at a recommended dose during a standard interval of time, but when one takes too big a dose (or increases the intervals taken) of it it is deadly. You can't even claim that with pot.

But if we are going to go the strawman route, I thought all gun owners were totally responsible people.

CharlesDarwin wrote:Why do two anecdotes constitute an emergency here? How many alcohol-related incidents were there in the same space of time?

Seriously, the low info reefer madness crowd would be hilarious if they didn't nearly always get their way.

Well, among other things, those "two anecdotes" are the exact opposite of what we were told this drug does and the effect it would be having on society after legalization.

Justifying one evil by pointing to another evil is hardly a wise thing to do, both are still an evil that have resulted in deaths and will continue to do so unless somehow mitigated.

Since the problem seems to be with edibles resulting in dangerous and deadly overdoses and psychotic episodes, it would seem reasonable to institute some common sense regulations of those edibles aimed at prevention.

"The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide." (Barack Obama August 21, 2010)

What exactly is your definition of "safe"....Tylenol is fairly safe at a recommended dose during a standard interval of time, but when one takes too big a dose (or increases the intervals taken) of it it is deadly. You can't even claim that with pot.

But if we are going to go the strawman route, I thought all gun owners were totally responsible people.

Uh, actually you can.

And, yes, that information has been posted in these forums before and in the MSM in case you haven't been paying attention.

We need some common sense regulations to prevent these dangerous overdoses the same way we have common sense regulations on the strength and content of over the counter Tylenol (or the sale of alcoholic beverages such as Absinthe).

"The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide." (Barack Obama August 21, 2010)

CharlesDarwin wrote:Why do two anecdotes constitute an emergency here? How many alcohol-related incidents were there in the same space of time?

Seriously, the low info reefer madness crowd would be hilarious if they didn't nearly always get their way.

Society has been perfectly aware the role ethyl alcohol plays in irresponsible acts but now we have added another legal and accessible drug into the mix. Have we forgotten that old adage that actions have consequences.

Is this just the tip of an iceberg, with what lies below being the effects of THC on the adolescent brain? (One affect on the adolescent brain is denial that pot has an affect on the adolescent brain.) What will this cost our society in the long haul? Will "potheads" be an apt description of an ever growing population?

Ultimately it's no different than alcohol usage . . . personal responsibility. Most people know how they will react to a drink or two and know (or SHOULD know) when they've crossed the line. Now that pot is legal in many forms, people need to be responsible in how they use it. If you are using it for the first time or the first few times--you had better start with baby steps and figure out what your reaction is.

I voted for 64 but personally will never touch the stuff. I watched my brother turn in to a slow-speaking dunce in front of my eyes from being stoned all the time. Not something I care to get involved in. But people should be able to make their own choice.

Seems as though the edibles are a point of concern, though, if there are issues with "serving size" and having some standards. But ultimately it's up to the person taking it to know what they are ingesting and to go slow.

Literately millions of dollars worth of Pot Food has been sold in Colorado since January. (Not to discount the countless pot brownies of years past)

These 2 incidents are not special or inductive of anything. Sad to say teenagers over consume intoxicants and hurt them selves all the time in the USA, just like husbands shoot their wives. Nobody wants dead teens or dead wives, but each week we get more of em. They only thing special about either of these incidents is the press afterwords.

Why are you calling for the passage of these bills? Colorado Marijuana products are already clearly labeled and we already regulate their packaging.

Nothing about A-64 gave these 2 people access to Marijuana. It simply made sure they knew exactly what they were buying.

This whole mess is going to prove to be a good lesson I how things work in this country

We are already seeing that marijuana can have some harmful effects if used improperly.So, you can bet that the legislature we elect will feel compelled to mandate label products to warn people about overdoses and to give buyers information about the indicate the strength of the product.

And you can also bet that we will soon hear about burdensome regulations, the nanny state , and this bureaucrats in Denver telling us what to do.

The college student consumed 6x the recommended amount. The dispensary employee who sold the cookies to the student who was old enough to buy them (which, I'd like to point out, the student who died was not) properly educated the student on usage. He or she recommended cutting the cookie into 6 pieces, and eating only one piece at a time. The student who died ignored that warning and consumed an entire cookie, and frankly we don't really know yet what exactly caused the psychiatric break he seemed to have had. The THC may have played a role, but so did stupidity. "Eat one piece," and according to the reports, he ate one piece, "didn't feel anything" and then, instead of eating a second piece and waiting a while, he ate FIVE more pieces.

The dispensary did nothing wrong. Marijuana did nothing wrong. The remaining cookies were confiscated and tested and all, gasp, came up in the acceptable range for what the labeling stated. As someone who has been a medical marijuana patient for years I will say that EVERY edible I have ever purchased has had CLEAR guidelines for usage, and has urged caution and good judgment in consumption. Just as the people who own liquor stores can't control what their customers do with the alcohol purchased once it leaves the store, neither can dispensary owners control what customers or patients do once they take home their marijuana edibles (or other items).

This is a classic case of taking responsibility for one's own actions. This student made a bad choice, that possibly played a ROLE in his death. It didn't CAUSE his death directly, unlike, oh, binge drinking, which directly causes thousands of deaths per year.

As for the sad case of Mrs. Kirk... first of all, let's not ignore the slow response time of emergency personnel. I'm sorry, but 13 minutes is unreasonably long for an urban area when an hysterical woman says her husband is hallucinating and wants her to kill him. There's also the fact that she said in the 911 call she thought he may also have taken prescription pain killers for his back. As far as I am aware, there are NO toxicology results available yet to the media about what else may have been in Kirk's bloodstream at the time of his apparently mental break. There's also the fact that Kirk chose to MAYBE use a marijuana edible in a house with his three young children, and to MAYBE combine it with the use of other drugs.

Finally, we don't yet know much, if anything, about the overall mental health of either of these men. Did they already have some sort of struggle happening? If Kirk has chronic pain, that in and of itself could play a role in his emotional stability, and I say this as someone who knows the hell that is living with chronic pain. Was the student depressed or struggling in some way prior to his sojourn to the land of legal marijuana (despite his not being of legal age to consume it)?

This editorial is reactionary and sensationalism at it's worst (meaning you don't even really have anything all that sensationalistic to share as of yet), and I agree with those who've mentioned the daily deaths directly linked to alcohol. Why aren't you writing an editorial about that crisis? That is an ongoing national crisis, that according to the CDC costs 80,000 lives a year.

You can hate the fact that marijuana is legal all you want, and you can choose to personally fear it and abstain from its usage. But you can't deny the facts that clearly that alcohol is far, far more dangerous.

PParker wrote:It's now too late for Colorado; closing the lid on this Pandora's box will be no easy task, but I hope other states can learn from our mistake.

Colorado didn't make any mistake passing Amendment 64. History has told us for a long time that prohibition will never work in a FREE country/society. However, with freedom comes responsibility and tolerance. Responsibility for following usage guidelines and tolerance for others that don't choose the same as you. It was this 19 year old's choice to ignore the law, ignore the reccomended dosage, and ignore a potentially dangerous environment. Those poor choices ultimately lead to his death. The tragedies we've seen are examples of misuse and clearly most any relatively safe substance can be abused to produce unintended consiquences. The majority will not abuse and the majority is who we make law/public policy for.

With PParker statement, It's clear he doesn't like or want freedom, so he wants everyone to believe freedom is a mistake. As a citizen, will you want to choose for yourself or would you like your government to choose for you? I'll continue to choose freedom.